In My Opinion: Rahul Kanodia, Datamatics

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Contents June 2012

COVER STORY
Page

14

NETWORK
Mukesh Lulla, Co-founder & President

A WINNINg STORy IN

Security
By Anamika Sahu & Vishwas Nair

06

22 [Business]

26 [Entrepreneur Talk] E-Commerce Players are on a High! Ravitej Yadalam, Pennyful 28 [In Conversation]
Innovating from India Dr. Wido Menhardt , Philips Increasing ROI of Corporate Databases Raman Govindarajan, perfSYSTEMS

Indian R&D market is on a Boom by Hari Anil

36 [Management] 38 [CIO Insights]

Remesh Kuruppath, Netvarth Technologies Inc. Bring Back the Human in Human Resources Jim Finkelstein, FutureSense, Inc. Moving to Cloud & Mobile is pertinent for Businesses Walter Curd, Maxim The Vc Pitch - Unwrapped: 4KTA Naveen Bisht, TiE Silicon Valleys The 4G challenge that Networking Users Now Face Dan-Joe Barry, Napatech

08 [Infocus]

Team Eagle: Leading High Performance Rahul Kanodia, Datamatics

30 [Technology] 32 [Business]

40 [Entrepreneurs Corner] 42 [Business] 44 [SI20]

20 [VC Talk]

12 [Venture Chakra]
E-commerce and e-Payments There is still a lot of untapped potential Niren Shah, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) India

34 [Business]

The Business of Making and Keeping Promises Mathew Augustine, Hanna Global Solutions Opportunities Galore In Restaurant Industry Today!

46 [Viewpoint]

GROW or DIE By Pradeep Shankar

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June 2012

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Pradeep Shankar Christo Jacob (U.S) Vimali Swamy (India)
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"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". Concept of identifying you in internet used to be unstable. Now the phenomena have changed as the internet market has matured. The concept of online identity has become a critical issue as identifying a web user is really a serious one for enterprises. Unlike virtual world, in real world there are established systems to prove your identity. Now most of the enterprises are feeling a real need of web user identity and there is a lack of established systems to reveal your identity in virtual world. Lately social networks and major internet players have taken it very seriously and thats why big players like Facebook, Twitter, and Google are keen today to bet huge on identity race. This second phase of internet boom is much contrary to the debates which we had two years back, where many were doubtful to say RIP to web. But today, we are seeing web evolving in multiple areas due to increase in ad spending. Foremost, being shift in the consumer behavior making the rate of iOS and Android smart device adoption more than four times faster than that of personal computers. Moreover we are seeing a trend among the average smart phone user where they spending more time in mobile applications than they do browsing the web. In the coming years, we will see our mobile and web account becoming a one-stop-point to access for seamless data access and establishing them as reliable identity service platform on the internet. When this happens, it would be a big deal for big players like Twitter, Facebook and Google. Even though, Twitter has a fairly put in efforts like powerful partnership with Apple through deep integration of the network into iOS 5 , Facebook making early moves on identity arena, and Google trying to bring in change in search experience through Google+ service, these players have to still not solved the identity crisis. We need to find a solution, where the identity created in a platform is valid in virtual world as well as real world government organization, financial organizations, banks, schools, airports and many more, which will trim down complexities of having multiple accounts and passwords for online and social activities. I believe U.S. is still the world's leading innovator and innovation is still not dead! If the best of world's leading innovators and research organizations can come together to come up with a ubiquitous identifier, where in virtual world and real world can identify a user, we are solving the identity crisis to a greater extend. Please do share your thoughts with us. Christo Jacob Managing Editor editor@siliconindia.com

Your identity is still Anonymous

Editorial

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By Rahul Kanodia

The author is Vice Chairman & CEO, Datamatics

The idea Being a solutions provider to Fortune 500 companies, we at Datamatics have always considered people to be our greatest strength. It is normally witnessed that during the downturn, people are generally considered to be the first casualty for protecting the bottom-line, despite being the prime resource. Ever since our inception, we have believed in the culture of putting people first in every decision. The idea of short-term gain, though enticing, doesn't lead to long-term sustainability for any business. Therefore, we chose to not only challenge the wide-spread industry practice of slimming the workforce and protecting margins, but also invest into
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hallenges and opportunities are two sides of the same coin. The trick lies in continuing to flip the coin, when faced with challenges. It was in the year 2008, when amidst the global meltdown we faced challenges relating to growth and revenue visibility. The global uncertainties were fast translating into economic downturn globally, with the western developed economies being at the core of this vortex. This resulted in constraints in getting new business and therefore it became pivotal for us to focus on creating a sustainable organization that would not only navigate the turbulent waters during downturn but would also enable us surge to newer heights during upturns.

in my opinion

Team Eagle

promising people with greater zeal, to enable the company take maximum benefit from the impending upturn. As a result, Team Eagle was formulated.

Leading High Performance

Team Eagle Team Eagle comprises of a group of high potential and high performance team members. These team members from diversified functions are brought together, nurtured and empowered to bring an improvement in terms of efficiency, quality of the projects and increase profitability with superior results. This program involves on-thejob learning, strategic project-based capability building, team bonding, creating leadership skills amongst cross functional teams, and executive coaching & mentoring, amongst others. At Datamatics it is considered to be a privilege to be a part of elite Team Eagle program. Team Eagle is selected through a rigorous process and is further divided into several high performance teams, comprising of cross-function members. So far, we have had four terms of Eagle program, with each one lasting for about four months. They all have been a great success. To leverage on the efforts put-in by the high performance teams, we have introduced an extended 30-60-90 days plan. This will ensure continuity. How does it work? Like the Eagle, the Team Eagle at Datamatics soars high on innovation and takes challenges head-on. The sense of focus and intense energy within and across teams cultivates a

healthy competitive spirit necessary for the program. Each team is provided with a project, with specific goals, targets and definitive timelines. The projects assigned to each team are usually outside the comfort zone of each member. Adoption of crossfunctional teams makes sure that each process is viewed afresh while ensuring that goals remain attainable. All teams are inspired and encouraged to come up with radical, out-of-the-box approaches that result in phenomenal improvement. These teams have the liberty to go beyond the existing processes, hierarchy and reporting structures in order to attain their goals/targets. Coaching and mentoring by seniors team members and external professional plays a vital role in developing these high-performance teams. Each team has its own mentor, who is a senior level resource in the organization. He guides, nurtures and advices each member at their call. These mentors are like the Mission Directors, and act as a catalyst to transform passion into performance. These teams have a strong sense of accountability for achieving their goals. Upon the achievement of the target or envisioned goal, the team members are rewarded in terms of mementos, financials and tangible awards. This ensures higher degree

Coaching and mentoring by senior team members and external professional plays a vital role in developing these high-performance teams

The impact Project Team Eagle has resulted in a marked change across the organization in terms of culture, innovation as well motivation levels. With cross functional teams working together on common goals, they are able to appreciate the efforts that each one of us puts in to make any project a great success. The indigenous program currently witnessing its fourth season has translated to productivity gains of 250-400 percent, increased revenue and higher client satisfaction. si

of motivation and recognition across the organization. This also leads to higher scope of innovation and process engineering across the organization. All teams are provided with holistic training that adds to their existing skill sets. To ensure higher levels of passion and motivation, Team Eagle members are consistently imparted with inspirational talks by eminent and established professionals. Out-bound events are organized with an objective to build a stronger bond between the team members and enhance their ability to look beyond the obvious. Brainstorming sessions with directed autonomy are held to build up teams self belief in coming up with solutions to the problems that will inevitably arise.

Rahul Kanodia

Datamatics a trusted partner to several Fortune 500 Companies, is a global provider of IT, KPO and Consulting services. The company (NSE & BSE listed) provides business aligned next-generation solutions to a wide range of industry verticals that help enterprises across the world overcome their business challenges and achieve operational efficiencies. These solutions leverage innovations in technology, knowledge of business processes, and domain expertise to provide clients a competitive edge.
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radeep K. Khosla dean of Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering, also known as the Carnegie Institute of Technology, has been selected as the eighth chancellor of the University of California, San Diego by UC president Mark G. Yudof. This is the second big appointment in U.S. academia for an IIT-ian in the last few months. Prior to this Soumitra Dutta, alumnus of IIT-Delhi was given the title of the dean of the Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management recently. This IITKharagpur alumni Khosla will be replacing Marye Anne Fox, who is retiring in August 2012. Serving as a dean for eight years at CMU Kholsa had set the direction for graduate and undergraduate research. He started curriculum reform, diversity efforts and instituted multidisciplinary and multi-college research centres as well as international programmes.

Indian firms Embrace the ByOD Trend

Khosla has also been instrumental in the college's fund raising in a $100 million campaign for a university wide energy institute and $90 million campaign for a 100,000 square foot College of Engineering building for biotech, energy and nanotechnology. He has received his master's degree and doctorate in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon in the 1980s. According to Mark Yudof, University of California President, Khosla will set of attributes that will enable the university to build on the excellence that bring to UC San Diego a distinctive has made it one of the top institutions of higher learning in the world. Talking about Khosla, Mark described him as a time-tested, oft-honored researcher, an innovative educator dedicated to improving the quality of life for students, faculty and staff, and an entrepreneurial leader with a global vision and proven fund raising abilities. he policy of BYOD may pose a threat to company's data, whereas Indian enterprises seem to be embracing the trend, where nearly 80 percent employees surveyed saying their companies allow them to bring their personal mobile phones and laptops to work. The research done by services provider BT, where 80 percent of the Indian employees surveyed said their employers permitted them to connect their personal devices to corporate network and use them for work. The research is based on survey of more than 2,000 users and decision makers across 11 countries, including India. But with this new policy, there are concerns of data being breached. Those surveyed seemed well informed about the risks that BYOD presents as 89 percent said "putting 24/7 access to corporate systems into the hands of an increasingly mobile workforce is now the main threat to IT security." The research added that "the adoption of BYOD brings to light new security issues." BT said IT decision makers now need to tackle a wider range of issues such as security concerns, increased data usage expenditure, potential threat to intellectual property and the cost of infrastructure for multiple devices, before introducing BYOD at the workplace. The security concerns, in fact, may not be totally unfounded as 73 percent of the IT respondents said they have experienced security breaches due to peo-

Indian American IITian Pradeep Khosla appointed as Chancellor of California University

Pradeep Khosla

Indian Companies support Three Lakh jobs in U.S.

he Indian companies play a vital role in creating employment opportunities in the U.S. and are also involved in 72 mergers and acquisitions, said TK Chand, Chairman CII, Vizag Zone and director (commercial) of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant. There has also been in an increase in the Indian companies in U.S. along with the increase in their employee count regardless of the serious problems related to financial crisis. CII conducted a similar study titled the 'Indian Roots, American Soil: Adding Value to U.S Economy and Society', gathered information from 36 prominent Indian companies doing business in America in diverse fields and came up with similar conclusion regarding the increase hiring process by Indian companies during the time of recession. It was found that these 36 companies alone employ nearly 52,000 employees in U.S. and they have also increased more than 70 percent of their staff in the last seven years. They also plan to create around 3,400 jobs, in the present year.

59 percent App Developers incur Loss

59 percent of the developers fail to earn back the sum they had expended to develop the app, while 80 percent of the firms are struggling to generate revenue for establishing an independent organization, reveals a finding by App Promo, an App strategy and marketing agency. The survey also found that the top earners in the group are seeing success because of the time and money they spend on marketing their mobile applications. The top earners represent 12
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percent of participants who earned $50,000 or more with their most successful app. This group spent the most effort on marketing with an average of 14 percent of their time dedicated to promoting their app and also had nearly $30,000 set aside as the average marketing budget. This is a stark comparison to 52 percent of participants who spent as little as 5 percent or less of their time on promotion and had a marketing budget of $0.

According to the App Promo CEO & Founder, Gary Yentin, After two years of working with developers on increasing downloads and money for their app, we wanted to do this survey to dispel the myth that all you have to do is build an app and watch the money roll on in. Our survey echoed exactly what we have been finding in the market, developers have to spend money and time on marketing in order to succeed. si

ple bringing in unauthorized devices. The research also pointed out that 65 percent of the employees feel that BYOD enables them to serve customers better, while 51 percent of the employees felt "more efficient and productive" by using a personally-owed device for work.

June 2012

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he CFO's role in technology decision making has increased in the last year with 44 percent of CFOs stating that their influence over IT investment has increased since 2010, says a joint study by Gartner and Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF), the research affiliate of Financial Executives International (FEI). While 47 percent say that it has remained the same and just nine percent of those surveyed believe that their influence has decreased. The survey of CFOs, which is in its fourth year, is designed to gather perceptions from financial executives about the economic environment, the CFO's role in technology and their IT investment priorities. The survey was conducted between October 2011 and February 2012, and it included 255 CFO respondents. "The CFO and CIO are well-posi-

CFOs role in IT Investment has increased from 2011

tioned to work together at generating business value from enterprise IT investments. However, this performance is often not achieved because of poor perceptions of IT, a parochial CFO or CIO perspective, or simply a failure to invest in the CFOCIO relationship. This years results show that, in most organizations, the CFO and CIO work together to finance IT and provide information that supports enterprise processes. But there is also an opportunity for them to form a powerful alliance that generates more value for the enterprise," says John Van Decker, Research Vice President,Gartner The survey results showed that there are many ways that CFOs are involved

Dipchand Nishar Highest paid Indian in LinkedIn

ipchand Nishar, Senior Vice President of Products and User Experience at LinkedIn, is one of the top paid managers at LinkedIn. Prior to this Nishar was the Senior Director of Product Management, handling product development in the Asia-Pacific region. He left the organization in the year 2008 and joined LinkedIn as the vice president of product strategy. Nishars salary Dipchand Nishar package in the year
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in making IT investment decisions. 41percent said that they were the actual leader of a group responsible for IT investment, whereas another 41 percent were part of a group responsible for IT decision making, 16 percent provide advice and one percent said they were the sole decision maker. Since the large majority was involved in group decision making about IT, engaging the CFO is clearly a critical issue.

2010 was $230,000 and previous year it increased up to an amount of $282,500.Apart from this, the total compensation he received in the year 2011 was $3,905,250. Kay Luo, a spokesperson for the company said, We wanted to find someone who knows how to build a large organization, but also has an entrepreneurial background.

While joining the firm Nishar said, LinkedIn continues to become more relevant as a communication and decision-making tool for professionals and businesses worldwide. I look forward to helping the innovation process at LinkedIn and bringing even more professional utility to LinkedIn members. He holds three patents and was also honored with the Google Founders Award for his work on the Google Ads System Automation. He received his graduation from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and Master's of Science in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois. si

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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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he global provider of advanced digital video service, Avail-TVN has raised $100 million of new investment from The Carlyle Group. The proceedings of the current round of investment will enable Avail-TVN to acquire UK-based On Demand Group; a provider of video on demand services to some of the biggest television brands outside of the U.S. Carlyle will join the existing Avail-TVN investors including Columbia Capital, Valhalla Partners, Novak Biddle and Pioneer Ventures. Stephens Inc. was an advisor to AvailTVN on the transaction. Avail-TVN will use the fund for international expansion and the development of new products and services for the companys global client base of content providers and multichannel video service providers. Merger of On Demand with Avail-TVN will bring together a diverse he New York based Adaptly that manages ad campaigns across multiple social networks succeeded in gathering $10.5 million in series B round of funding led by Valhalla Partners, with participation from Time Warner Investments and Vivi Nevo along with the previous investors including First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, Lerer Ventures, and others. The company plans to use the fund for further global expansion, product development, and expansion of its sales team.

Tapjoy launches $5 Million Fund to support innovation in Asia

apjoy, a mobile advertising and publishing platform, launched the Tapjoy Asia Fund, backed by $5 million investment. The fund is designed to encourage and support developers throughout Asia in the innovation and growth of Free-to-Play mobile apps for the Android and iOS platforms. With offices already located in Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul, Tapjoy is marking its continued commitment to the Asia Pacific market. The Tapjoy Asia Fund offers monetary and marketing support to both new mobile game studios starting a new venture and experienced game developers looking to self-publish and grow their user base for current apps. We are committed to helping developers bring fun, engaging mobile games and experiences to market successfully. Providing a level playing field in Mihir Shah which developers large and small can have their apps discovered will only strengthen the mobile marketplace for everyone. It is our hope that the Tapjoy Asia Fund will be as well received as the Tapjoy Andriod Fund we launched in the U.S. last year which resulted in 155 new apps being devel-

ig data analytics solutions provider Nuevora has secured their first round of institutional funding of $2.25 million from Fortisure Ventures. The fund will be used to develop a suite of cloud-based businessprocesses-as-a-service (BPaaS) analytics applications. Headquartered in San Ramona, California and operates an analytics center of excellence in India, Nuevora was founded in 2005 by Phani Nagarjuna. The company is a big data solutions provider that helps leading organizations achieve positive, high-impact business outcomes through the delivery of continuous and context-sensitive predictive insights. It works with some of the leading corporations in retail, financial services, insurance, high-technolsiliconindia

oped, says Mihir Shah, CEO, Tapjoy. Founded in 2007, Tapjoy is a mobile advertising and monetization platform whose unique Mobile Value Exchange model allows users to select personalized advertisements with which to engage for virtual currency or premium content. Its turnkey in-app advertisement platform helps developers acquire cost-effective, high-value new users and monetize their applications, while its powerful advertising marketplace lets brand advertisers reach a global mobile audience spanning more than 20,000 applications. The company is backed by top-tier investors including J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Rho Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners, InterWest Partners and D.E. Shaw Ventures.

Avail-TVN nabs $100 Million for global expansion

customer base, strong content relationships with leading entertainment and media companies around the globe, highly developed and proven workflow and delivery systems, the finance and scale to drive aggressive revenue growth. Tony Kelly, CEO at On Demand Group, will now report to Avail-TVN CEO, Ramu Potarazu, and serve as a member of the executive management team. "Our strategy has been to invest in leading players across the digital media ecosystem and incorporate them into one company to build Avail-TVN into the largest provider of advanced digital video services worldwide. The Carlyle Group's investment supports that vision, and pro-

Nuevora raises $2.25 Million in first round of institutional financing from Fortisure Ventures
ogy, travel services, and other industries. Nuevoras vision is to help shape the BPaaS market space and be a leader in delivery of cloud-based advanced business analytics apps for targeted business problems. Just as software-as-a-service (SaaS) disrupted the traditional enterprise software business models over the past decade, Nuevora envisions a new wave of business processes-as-aservice (BPaaS) applications taking root in major corporations that drive smarter decisions through real-time and continuous analytics. Its clearly becoming an apps-driven world, whether at the consumer level or within the corporate and we intend to be among the leaders in the new BPaaS market space. This new funding will be instrumental in helping

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us execute that strategy, says Phani Nagarjuna, Founder & CEO, Nuevora. Nuevora develops business analytics solutions for major corporations in retail, financial services, insurance, high technology, and travel services markets. In doing so over the past few years, the company has built a proven analytics platform and targeted analytics solutions that can be delivered as BusinessProcesses-as-a-Service (BPaaS) via the cloud. We were drawn to Nuevora by Phanis knowledge of the business analytics space and our conviction that analytics provides tangible value to companies by helping them understand their customers better, says Mani Subramanian, Founder & CEO, Fortisure Ventures. si

vides the capital and global network to build upon this foundation both domestically and internationally. With the integration of On Demand Group, we broaden our capabilities, extend our distribution and are able to further develop monetization opportunities for our customers in the rapidlyRamu Potarazu changing digital media space," says Ramu Potarazu, CEO, Avail-TVN. The company is the largest global provider of digital video services. Working with both service providers and content owners, it is focused on providing its global customer base solutions that simplify content management and distribution, and enable the monetization of content.

Adaptly secures $10.5 Million in Series B Funding

The company has also launched its Evergreen social advertising optimization product that helps determine which pieces of brands social media content are performing the best, then converts them to paid media opportunity placement. "This represents a fundamental shift in value for social marketing. Paid is only as good as the content behind it, and content is only as good as how many people it reaches. Adaptly aims to solve these marketing problems with Evergreen by giving Nikhil Sethi brands the power to maximize the reach of their highest quality content," says Nikhil Sethi, CEO & Co-founder, Adaptly.

Founded in 2010 by Nikhil Sethi and Garrett Ullom, Adaptly was incubated through DreamIt Ventures and is now based in New York City. Its portfolio clients include brands and agencies such as PepsiCo, Diageo, Showtime, Big Fuel, Kraft Foods and hundreds more. "Adaptly is fundamentally changing the traditional advertising model. We have had the fortune of investing in several disruptive advertising technology companies, and are very pleased to become a part of the next age of advertising with Adaptly. Evergreen is the latest example of how this talented team continues to innovate with a singular focus on serving a brand's need to reach and engage with its audience across a wide variety of social platforms," says Kiran Hebbar, General partner, Valhalla Partners. si
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COVERSTORY

O
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NETWORK
Security
By Anamika Sahu & Vishwas Nair Mukesh Lulla & Vinai Kolli, Co-Founders
strike it out on their own. It was at around this time in 1998, the duo noticed that while chip makers were moving to the concept of System-on-Chip by adding diverse complex functionalities on to a single chip and increasing their performance, software vendors of the time were trying to just stick with the lowest common denominator, rather than target the new functionality. And a major functionality was regularly underleveraged Security. Enabling the embedded security on a chip requires complex algorithms. When we think of security, we deal with large chunks of data. The chips have low horse-power but have dedicated functionality typically for network processing, routing and so on. While these were capable of a lot more, the software companies of that time were trying to broaden their appeal by supporting the maximum number of chips possible, rather than speed up processing using resources on each chip that were different from other chips. Take security as an example - it would benefit the most from acceleration by using native resources on each vendors chip. What we aimed was to integrate the hardware and software in the embedded chips and get the maximum performance from the native chip functionality, says Vinai. This was the idea that led to the birth of TeamF1 and the rest, as they say, is history. Our technology offerings build up on existing operating system blocks and we offer our customers embedded network security and performance-critical, hardware-assisted software. We offer these as stand-alone modules or complete turnkey solutions ready for production. We also augment the technology with our professional services offerings to customize our software products. We feel this leverages our clients' core competencies by letting them focus on end-product definition while TeamF1's combination of fieldvalidated standard software components and custom development services help bring a differentiated, advanced, endproduct to market in a low-risk and lowcost way, explains Mukesh. And this is indeed true we find that TeamF1 participates in full life-cycle development
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A WINNINg STORy IN

ne of the biggest challenges in cyber-security today is how the software in our operating systems and applications are full of vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers. While traditional software makers have made headway in developing more resilient applications, embedded device and system makers lag behind in secure system design and development maturity. Its no wonder that top network equipment makers like Cisco, NETGEAR, D-Link and others have begun to understand the kind of threat that networks are susceptible to, and are actively opting for embedded software to provide their customers a secured networking product. And helping these companies achieve is none other than TeamF1. Founded in 1998 by two college friends, Mukesh Lulla and Vinai Kolli, TeamF1, headquartered in Fremont, California, is a preeminent supplier of OEM-ready software to the embedded systems market. Understanding the importance of innovative product technologies, and how efficient project

management techniques, well-honed software engineering processes and a robust production-quality test environment contribute to the making of user-friendly and solid customer products, the company develops software modules and turnkey solutions to secure connected devices used across different market verticals. With the most traction in this market, and a significant share of customers and units shipped worldwide for smallmedium business security routers, we are not wrong to believe that we are a leader in our field. Our software today is an integral part of the networking devices developed by most Tier-1 networking equipment providers, says Vinai, CoFounder and Vice-President, TeamF1. Buddies since undergraduate school, both Mukesh and Vinai had etched a career of their own in system-on-chip software, and embedded OS & device driver technologies respectively. After years in the industry, both decided that it was time to

The Eureka! Moment

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on a wide variety of embedded software OEM projects using its technologies including the latest in telecommunications, networking, internet appliances and broadband access devices. With an emphasis on deep technical expertise, superior quality, and responsiveness of support, TeamF1's offerings have found a home in a diverse set of embedded applications -- internet access, secure communications, industrial automation and control, and aerospace/defense equipment markets. Since its inception, TeamF1 has proven to be a leader in delivering embedded networking and internet infrastructure products. Through the years, TeamF1 has been instrumental in getting products ranging from set-top boxes to wireless Internet appliances & high-end datacom equipment out to market for key players in various segments of the embedded world. Just like the unique core idea behind the companys formation, there is also a reason behind its unusual name. Vinai and I are both fans of Formula-1 or F1 racing. The underlying theme of car racing is achieving maximum performance while putting limits on the resources used to achieve that. Also the F1 key in a keyboard is the help key. This is how we got christened the company TeamF1: were always there to Help you to get the maximum performance out of hardwaresoftware combination, explains Mukesh. Today, over a decade since its founding, the company is self-reliant, cash-flow positive, and operating without any external investment. As the founders like to say, TeamF1 is customer-success funded. But this journey has not been an easy one for the two founders. In mid2000, after nearly 18 months of working to develop a product that addressed what they saw as a gap in current techsiliconindia

nologies, they were ready with a prototype product to be tested in the market. While we readied our first version, our income was only from providing consulting services and it was really to sustain the few of us that were there in the company including me, Vinai and the first couple of employees that we hired, reminisces Mukesh, thinking back to the early years of the company. But by the time the founders readied the

Conquering the Challenges

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prototype, the industry was in the throes of the dotcom meltdown, ripples of which had affected the networking and telecom sector, and further down the supply chain to the equipment providers who would be the target market for TeamF1s technologies. Potential customers of TeamF1 were facing the heat, leaving new product development budgets scaled down, technology spending cut, and the founders found themselves in a dilemma. The company had not yet sold their products when things went topsy-turvy and they saw other technology entrepreneurs get the rug pulled out under them by investors even if they were further ahead in their development of new technologies. TeamF1 had two options to choose from: they could fold the shop like a lot of their peers did at that time

for lack of investment, or to see if there was indeed interest in what they had to offer to the market and if they could monetize that interest instead. And, it turned out that initial Tier 1 customers, including the likes of Cisco and Avaya, saw a lot of value in the software they had developed. So Mukesh and Vinai decided they would license the software even though it was just a module, since it did fulfill a particular need. Instead of focusing on funding needed to grow a technology start-up, they went right ahead and kick-started the business model. Of course, it meant a different trajectory for the company: instead of developing a complete software solution, they decided to license the software module-by-module as they evolved their technology portfolio and use the revenues from customers to grow the business instead. The next few years were very challenging for the industry, but TeamF1 succeeded in adding to what they had developed initially. Customers were eager to license these modules since it was a very intimidating problem for them to solve, and they would rather have that technology in the form of a software black box that secured the embedded devices and took the problem off their plate. Over time, as the company developed a critical mass of these modules, it eventually allowed them to launch complete turnkey product offerings, the flagship one being SecureF1rst Security Gateway Solution (SGS), a turnkey software package that combines fieldproven, standard components with an array of customizable options for the ultimate in product flexibility. The product enables equipment makers to deliver leading-edge VPN/firewall gateway devices to the market in record time at far less risk than traditional development approaches. Devices built around SecureF1rst SGS offer end-customers ironclad, networking security; easy-to-

use management features; and multiple gateway options. Other products in the offering which are making deep in-roads in the market include Managed Access Point Solution, CPE Gateway Solution and Network Attached Storage Solution. 9/11 played a key role in raising security awareness around the world. While the company was founded on the principles of securing devices long before this, in the months and years following 9/11, government and industry standards around requirements for embedded devices grew more stringent. The companys customers were faced with the prospect of not having their proposals accepted if they did not meet specific security requirements and with security being a complex field, not everyone was keen on developing such technologies from scratch. What customers needed was software they could integrate into their systems without much fuss, and meet the security requirements without having to learn all the details. The problem is that customers already had networking software and one of the common pitfalls in security is that it is most vulnerable wherever there is a seam. All of this needed to be seamless. Connectivity to the internet is what TeamF1s customers were trying to secure. If their networking software came from elsewhere, and embedded security technology came from TeamF1, putting this together required them to know a lot about the internal mechanics of security. So providing the networking modules in addition to security was a natural next step for TeamF1. The company thus started developing networking modules as they grew, because of the seamlessness that was required to be more efficient and more secure. Embedded software is the software that resides in devices, giving them the intelligence that we see in our day-today lives as smart appliances. This includes everything from a car navigation

Answering Security Needs

system and home/office broadband routers, to mobile phones/tablets. As more of these devices are connected to the internet (after all, witness the growth in mobile embedded devices with smartphones), embedded connectivity and security requirements are on the rise. For TeamF1, its emphasis on highperformance also meant squeezing the

What customers needed was software they could integrate into their systems without much fuss, and meet the security requirements without having to learn all the details.
maximum out of constrained hardware. Since its software is embedded, TeamF1 works very closely with the hardware in order to extract the expected performance. In the embedded world, traditionally, the biggest competitors for software providers have been the customers themselves, since equipment vendors (also called OEMs or original equipment manufacturers) also develop their own home-grown software. But as software requirements get more complex, companies like TeamF1 are an attractive alternative. TeamF1s ability to offer a complete, customizable, security platform that can protect legacy systems

The X Factor

and be the cornerstone of next generation ones makes it a win-win for customers wanting to move away gracefully from home-grown software in existing legacy devices to adopting rich new features that TeamF1 has to offer, in their new products. TeamF1 found a vacuum where traditional OEMs were not able to cost-effectively or efficiently solve their problems. They found that there were not many commercial competitors in this field which was good news; but the bad news was convincing customers who sometimes think that this was something that they could solve on their own. Many times, this required making them aware of problems that they were not aware of earlier. As an example, a mantra in the security field is that Security by obscurity is fatal. The belief that secrecy (such as secret passwords or commands to control the system that no one knows about) can secure systems from attacks has a couple of serious problems: if a hacker figures out this secret and worse, puts it out on the internet. Its not just one device affected - companies cannot easily recall all the devices from the field. Another is that a secret is only as strong as the people who keep them. A disgruntled employee possessing a secret could put millions of devices in the field at risk by threatening to expose a password. The resistance TeamF1 faced from its customers was frequently not lack of credibility in its technology, but the lack of awareness of security pitfalls. Some of the bigger companies and industry groups have started recognizing it and making it a requirement. Customers are now becoming aware that their device is connected to the internet, and the internet is also connected back to the device. This lets them see things in a very different light. On the internet people are able to probe your device, query it and without your knowledge know the profile and signature of your device to hack it using any vulnerability they may find, explains Mukesh.
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June 2012

TeamF1 licenses its solutions to customers in a form they call customizable software. Once delivered to the customer, it is now customized software that is specific to that customer and by means of which they can differentiate their product in the market instead of competing only on price. TeamF1 has spent a lot of effort internally to make sure that their offering is comprised of standard building blocks while still being customizable. The customer provides them with their end-product requirements a blueprint. TeamF1 customizes its software and integrates the modules accordingly. This allows them to deliver the benefits of custom software without the high costs and long time-tomarket pitfalls of developing custom software from scratch. Since TeamF1 not only delivers the software solutions their customers need, they deliver these right to the manufacturing floor, so the software has to be production ready. This product cannot be an experimental technology left in the hands of the customer after that. It is delivered in a form where the endusers can use their products as-is and so, quality remains the top priority. Security is something that is baked into the DNA of the product, and is what the company has always been known for. TeamF1 feels that on top of the operating system, there are three major pieces every turnkey solution has: networking, security and management. The company consults with customers during the sales process on how to fulfill their end-market or service provider requirements. While TeamF1 still licenses modules to large customers seeking to solve specific point problems, most of their revenue tends to be from customers who take a complete software delivery from them and pay licensing fees based on the units shipped, which is aligned
siliconindia

Working with Customers Business Needs

Security is something that is baked into the DNA of the product, and is what the company has always been known for.
with the companys customer success based business model. Despite the success that the company has garnered, it has continued to drive and grow itself organically. The founders cling to the idea of being Customer Success Funded: the company is only successful if its customers using its products are. In retrospect, it turned out to be a very positive thing that due to necessity, the companys growth has been gradual and organic. This helped us embed,

The Vision Ahead

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pardon the pun, the values that were critical to the longevity of a software company and our vision for our corporate culture. Whether it is our quality processes within our company that have evolved over time, the way new ideas are championed within the company, and rolled in without too much bureaucracy, how new team-members are mentored by the senior team when they enter the company, or how merit-based rewards are used to incentivize key and deserving team-members, it has stayed true to the values we wanted for the company. says Mukesh. Today, from a humble 2 member company, TeamF1 is 150 people strong with offices in both US and India. The companys view is that the market remains thirsty for secure connectivity of a wider range of devices, especially with the demands of mobile and cloud computing. With its expanding technology portfolio and using its proven engineering processes, TeamF1s vision is to foster embedded innovations by enabling a new generation of secure, highquality networking products with the shortest time-to-market. Besides its current flagship security gateway and wireless products, TeamF1 has on its roadmap turnkey offerings targeted to (a) advanced broadband gateway devices that deliver a combination of voice, video, wired and wireless data (the so-called quad-play, considered the holy grail of combined services) securely to home and businesses, and (b) hybrid personal/public cloud storage devices that combine the ubiquity of cloud access with the security and privacy of personal storage. For a company that has survived as many as three economic downturns and high pressure customer demands, realizing its vision does not seem impossible. In keeping with their fondness for performance car racing, as Mukesh and Vinai like to say, more than a decade into the companys life, they feel their engines are just getting started and they are geared up for the race to come. si

June 2012

VC Talk

E-COMMERCE AND E-PAyMENTS THERE IS STILL A LOT OF UNTAPPED POTENTIAL

By Niren Shah, Managing Director, Norwest
Venture Partners (NVP) india. Niren Shah is the Managing Director, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) India. He has 18 years of entrepreneurial, finance, investing and banking experience from leading consumer oriented companies and global financial institutions. He serves as an advisor on India-based investments across a wide range of sectors and across various stages-from early and mid-stage venture to growth equity. Prior to joining NVP India, Niren was the Senior Director of Strategy and Ventures at eBay Inc. He was also part of the Marketplaces Ventures leadership team, where he was responsible for considering new business opportunities, acquisitions and potential investments across the Global Marketplaces.

As a country, India is growing well and the long term prospects look good despite some short term concerns. At NVP India, our focus for the last two years has been on early to late stage Internet companies, and we expect that this sector will continue to flourish for many years to come. Within the Internet space, eCommerce and ePayments and the eClassifieds segments continue to have significant potential. Internet is at an early stage in India but showing significant growth especially via mobile devices. This opens up a gamut of opportunities in terms of ePayment systems; proliferation of which will in turn drive the adoption of trends like eCommerce and eClassifieds. We also believe that the Adtech revolution is just hitting India. We are seeing this in our companies like Fashionandyou, Pepperfry, Quikr, Komli Media etc. Beyond this, we see SaaS type models having tremendous potential, since startups and businesses in India can conserve their scarce resources by renting their software etc as a service rather than buying licenses. In addition to this, at NVP India, we are also focusing on spaces such as consumer and healthcare especially in areas where one can use technology to significantly increase adoption. For instance, one of our portfolio companies, Fitbit, a U.S. based startup, brings game mechanics into your daily fitness regime. One can watch ones own workout, compare how you did against a friend, check out how long did you run, what was your heart rate and even stats like your sleep rhythm using a watch-like device to be worn on your wrist.

Technology Trends shaping the industry

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In the last five ears, we have witnessed a tremendous positive change

Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

in the Indian startup scenario and ecosystem. More and more qualified teams are accepting the potential of being entrepreneurs and making the shift. However, when compared to Silicon Valley, the shift to entrepreneurship still feels relatively slower, and thats partly since we havent seen a Google or a Facebook type exit event happen from India (as yet). Once people understand that even a $100 billion+ company can actually be created from India, we expect a sea-change in behavior towards entrepreneurship and startups. The primary investment criteria for NVP India is the quality of the team and the business idea, model, market size and its growth potential: Entrepreneurs need to be careful about is the building of the core team. On several occasions we have seen that one entrepreneur is basically doing (or trying to do) everything. Instead, startups need to ensure that they have a adequate number of high quality founders/senior management members. The core team should be able to scale the business, have strong domain and other indispensable (and comple-

mentary) skill sets that will be tested when you are out to build a great company. Another prime consideration for founders of a startup should be the scalability of the business/idea and differentiation of the offering. Last year, when we were looking at eCommerce companies, we noticed that in certain verticalized sub-sectors, almost 8 companies had a similar offering. Startups must focus on the areas which are differentiated. Innovation is the need of the hour in Indian startup landscape. For the real entrepreneurs, this is the best time in Indias history to go out and build something and take some risk. Building a startup shouldnt be contingent on getting angel/VC funding. Most great entrepreneurial ventures initially had to be bootstrapped. Find an idea which you are very passionate about, which you have done diligence on, which you feel could really work, rally some good cofounders and then commit by going out and just doing it! The journey is the destination, so enjoy it!!si

Advice for Entrepreneurs

June 2012

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June 2012

Business

ndia is fast becoming a favored R&D hub of the world. More than one-third of the global 1,000 R&D spenders already have centers in India and many more will be here soon. About 718 Multi National Organizations (MNC) currently have R&D centers in India and the country currently boasts an installed R&D talent pool base of over 200,000 engineers growing at an average of 9 percent a year for the last five years. These results were put forth by a Zinnov as part of their study, Compensation & Benefits Survey 2012. According to the study, 2011 witnessed the strong revival of R&D investments worldwide. The significant
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June 2012

Indian R&D market is on a

growth in R&D activities across the globe signals the optimism in world economy which had earlier registered a drop in R&D investments in 2010. Globally the spending on R&D stood at $538 billion in 2009-10 period, while this in 2010-11 this grew at 8.2 percent to reach $582 billion. The study also says that till about mid 2000s, MNCs were concentrating at tier-1 cities in India primarily due to availability of rich talent, investment friendly policies, and high quality of life, but by 2005 this pattern started changing. Now MNCs have started expanding to tier-2 cities as they offered advantages such as higher catchment area, lower attrition, and cost arbitrage.

Source: Zinnov analysis of MNC R&D ecosystem in India

In 2011, MNC R&D centers in India witnessed an average salary increment of 13 percent. Increments varied between 10.1 percent and 13 percent during this period. When compared to the salary increment of the mid 2000s this number might seem not at par, still post recession this increment is giving a new ray of hope to the field. The study suggested that while salary calibrations did happen across levels, the direction is still not very clear. Salary in all R&D positions varied from city to city in the country with NCR and Bangalore taking the lead in most positions while Pune and Chennai trailing them. It also presented a comparison between salaries offered in the U.S. and in India, and this comparison proved that the difference between the U.S. salary and the India salary tends to reduce as one moves up the hierarchy. Another major finding is related to attrition in the industry. After a year of very high attrition the scenario seems to be changing and becoming more stable. Overall dip in attrition is a reflection of increased focus by companies on career development, communication and competitive pay to retain talent, says the study. From a roaring 21 percent in 2010 the attrisiliconindia

tion rate has finally come down to 17 percent in 2011. Many of the best in class companies managed to keep a very close check on their attrition rate and keep it much lower than the industry average, with some even as low as 8.7 percent. Increased focus on career enhancement by ensuring increased ownership might have helped these companies in attaining this, says the study. While attrition went down,

enterprise Social Media and Web 2.0 Market 2010, finds that the market experienced more than 20 percent growth. it generated revenues of $28.6 million in 2010 and is expected to touch $126 million in 2017.
Courtesy: Frost & Sullivan

hiring went up and reached 32.7 percent in 2011, up from 31.5 percent in 2010. A major finding in the study is that more and more employees are now looking at the content of the job, including technologies, frameworks and forums, rather than just the compensation package. 60.3 percent of participants in the study said that content is more important than compensation package. Another disturbing finding is that about 70.2 percent of the total workforce in the Indian R&D centers is just graduates and the percent of PHD holders stands lower than .3 percent. This is an issue that has been lingering in the industry for some time now and has been discussed at several occasions. R&D talent pool in India comprises of mostly young employees in the age bracket of 25-35 years. Most of the employees of the R&D centers are in Product Development or Sustenance, Product Verification or Testing areas; together these contribute almost 93 percent of the total workforce. Product management has the least number of employees, about .4 percent of the total workforce. Product management function has yet not matured in India and only a handful of product managers are currently available in India, adds the study. About 82 percent of the surveyed R&D centers are now offered joining bonus to its employees in 2011, up from the 56 percent that offered the same in 2010. The study concluded by forecasting the expected salary increment for the year 2012. The rate remains more or less the same at an average of 12.6 percent. Overall, the present scenario in the industry looks great and the road ahead seems to have great potential. MNC R&D centers in India are expected to continue to focus on various key enablers for higher value generation, concludes the study. si By Hari Anil

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Entrepreneur Talk
funds, and companies that are built on strong fundamentals and validated business models are not likely to find it difficult to raise angel or institutional investment. While it is advisable to bootstrap a venture till some level of customer validation of the model has been achieved, exorbitant costs of customer acquisition make this a challenging task for internet entrepreneurs who usually work with tight margins. Although improving greatly over the last year or so, building consumer trust is arguably the biggest challenge faced by e-commerce entrepreneurs in India today. Educating the customer about the product or service being offered, and keeping expectations real are essential in providing a good customer experience. In spite of the all the challenges and hurdles that our e-commerce industry faces, it is still one of the more promising markets in the world for entrepreneurs today. There will undoubtedly be exciting times in the years to come.

E COMMERCE

PLAYERS ARE ON A HIGH!

Ravitej Yadalam

New York headquartered Pennyful.com, is a pioneer in online cash back shopping. It works on a simple model: every time you purchase through its website store links, the respective stores pay Pennyful.com a commission, which it simply splits with you, thereby giving a win-win situation to both. Ravitej Yadalam, Founder & CEO, Pennyful shares his insights into the state of e-commerce sector in the industry today.
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Hot trends in the industry today The e-commerce market in India is growing at an incredible rate. Shoppers are slowly but surely beginning to trust the Indian ecommerce merchant. Just a couple of years ago, the mindset of the average online consumer were a lot more averse to transacting online. Today, one is a lot more comfortable in spending money on the internet. Broadband penetration across the country, recognizable online merchants, skeptic-friendly payment methods like cash on delivery, wide product choices, and unbeatably low costs are some of the factors that are driving this change. Riding on this wave are a growing set of increasingly savvy shoppers who will leave no stone unturned to find the best bargains and offers on the web. These shoppers save a lot of money on their shopping, but also spend a lot more than the average online shopper. Merchants are taking advantage of this and offering a lot of ways for shoppers to save money in the form of coupon codes and cashback through websites like ours. We are seeing the launch of new e-commerce players every day, and everyone wants in on selling to the growing online shopper community. While this is exciting news for the online shopper, investors today are a lot more conservative than last year in funding new e-commerce ventures in this crowded space. There has even been consolidation resulting from lack of funds for ventures that have been around for some time. There is a growing opportunity for ventures with products and services that enable e-commerce in India. Such ventures help ecommerce companies streamline payment processing, shipping and logistics, or online

marketing. Streamlining of these key areas of e-commerce will enable companies to focus on their core competence and also cut costs on these processes.

Whats shaping the industry in next few years? 2011 saw a lot of investor interest in the Indian e-commerce market. A lot of what happens from here will probably be determined by how much this interest is sustained. Another factor that will have an impact on the industry is the cost of customer acquisition. Currently, high customer acquisition costs make it extremely difficult for smaller players to compete with larger VCbacked ventures. Here too, online-marketing-focused e-commerce enablers will play a key role in helping to bring this cost down and improve sustainability. Interest from global brands to open shop in India will also have a significant impact on the e-commerce landscape. In addition to bringing in more capital, these companies bring knowledge of global best practices that can improve every aspect of the end users experience. As it has been in other emerging markets, the entry of global brands

would create a whole new category of consumers which would eventually benefit the local economy and other domestic players. Brick and mortar retailers are starting to take notice of the rising number of online shoppers. They are investing heavily on taking their brands online. If this trend continues, there will be a lot more choice for the online shopper. COD (Cash On Delivery) is the most preferred payment method for online shoppers today. But there are a host of challenges that the merchant faces while fulfilling COD orders, starting from cost of delivery to returned merchandise to payment collection. E-commerce enablers are addressing some of these concerns by innovations such as separating payment collection from product delivery, thereby reducing probability of returns. Profitability will depend on how many of these challenges can be addressed, and how soon. Challenges faced by entrepreneurs today In todays increasingly crowded market, its more important than ever for entrepreneurs to have a clear value proposition and differentiated positioning. There is no shortage of

Smartphones helps you navigate highways and streets but the global positioning system (GPS) goes blind in a mega mall. researchers have devised a navigation system for interiors. it cleverly combines sensors, enabling the device to track the movements and position of its user with precise detail.
Courtesy: Germany's Fraunhofer Institute in collaboration with the Bosch Corporation.
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June 2012

In Conversation

INNoVATING FRom INDIA

Philips Innovation Labs in Bangalore, recently showcased the in roads it has made into developing India specific innovative products. In a candid chat, Dr Wido Menhardt, Head of Philips Innovation Campus, Bangalore shared his insights into the Indian Healthcare market, the vacuum, opportunities and plans at Philips to lead the market.

Wido Menhardt Dr. Wido Menhardt is a seasoned technology executive with a passion for taking technology ideas from scratch to market, and to then scale them to volume deployment. He started his career at Philips medical systems in Hamburg (Germany) and Eindhoven (Netherlands) where he authored more than 50 papers in journals, and at conferences, presented on topics ranging from MRI Physics to Fuzzy Logic. Wido has spent his career in software development and executive management, in multinationals like Kodak and Philips. He has also worked with start-ups in innovative display technologies, artificial vision, and search engines. He has eight patents to his name. Dr. Wido holds a PhD in Computer Science from Hamburg University, and an MSc in Physics from the Technical University of Vienna. He has studied, lived, and worked in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and the U.S.
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Healthcare Technology and Indian Market Access to healthcare and assisting healthcare professionals in their daily work with technology is going to be a big opportunity. We have a shortage of skilled doctors in India, and may not have doctors at all in rural areas. By providing access to patient information anywhere, through mobiles, cloud based solutions, and computerized decision support we can help put an end to this problem. If a doctor is in a rural area analyzing a patient and then entering that information on a mobile, that goes into a cloud, so somebody else can look at that data and provide feedback and help the doctor in the rural area to decide on the treatment. You will also see more and more sensors that connect to mobiles or internet, devices like blood pressure cuff or electrocardiograph that measures the patients vital signs. These devices can be on-

India Vs Developed Market India is still very much behind on Clinical IT, so this means managing patient data in a digital form is nonexistent to a large extent. If you go and take an MRI you still get a film here in India, of course you can ask for a CD, but if you come back a month later you can be assured that your data will not be there in the clinic. So connecting all the healthcare information and storing all the healthcare information, managing patients in hospitals or in healthcare systems digitally is yet to be built. In U.S. or in other developed countries we already have several systems that do this, but in India it is different and these systems cannot be adapted and it has to be developed separately. For example in developed countries the healthcare payment is either carried out by insurance or National Healthcare Systems where as in India there are a lot of out of the pocket payments, this alone makes the scenario a lot different here. The growth here will come from equipping the healthcare systems with technology that is built especially addressing all the differences of this market. Innovations from India In healthcare IT in the U.S. there is no such thing as UID, in India also it is not there yet, but it has the potential to create a huge opportunity. You take an X-ray or a CT scan from one hospital, then at some later point of time you go and take another X-ray or scan

line by themselves, through a mobile device or through near field connectivity. This whole chain that includes sensors, mobiles, and cloud based intelligence has tremendous potential to revolutionize healthcare. In the developed world it is all about consumerism, now consumers will start getting more power in their healthcare. In developing countries this will make access to healthcare easier.

from a different hospital, now the doctor from the second hospital wants to see your previous X-ray or scan but they are in some other hospital. So the patient needs to carry the films or the CD around. Unifying all these UIDs or identifiers will help change this situation, it will give doctors access to the data of their patients from any other health centers. The doctor can use the UID and access his patients medical history easily. This process is called federation and the federation solution for Philips Healthcare IT is developed out of the Indian center. Another contribution from Indian Innovation center is CAT scanner simulators. When they developed, the engineers often need to use actual cat scanners to see whether what they are working on actually works. A real CAT scanner costs a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and for a significant CAT scanner development program they need dozens of CAT scanners just for the engineers and this will result in a huge cost. In order to save these costs we have developed simulators, both software simulators and hardware simulators at different levels. These can replace the real cat scanners and get the job done at much lesser cost. Another contribution of the India innovation center is in the lighting area. When you get a batch of LED bulbs from any company there will be color variations among different LEDs. Even if they are all red or white, there will be minute color variations between them. But when you are manufacturing fixtures with multiple LEDs, you have to make sure that all the LEDs are of the same color. So the manufacturers take the LEDs, measure the color and mix and match the LEDs from different boxes if necessary. We have developed a sophisticated software for this in India. Our portable music players connect to the Philips cloud backend to do software upgrades and collect cer-

tain statistics of their usage and errors. The software that runs in these players as well as the software in the cloud backend is developed in the India center. These are some of the many innovations and developments that the Indian center is carrying on.

Staying at the Forefront of Technology The enthusiasm and the commitment of the people here is unparallel. Our engineers are very driven and curious and they stay up to date with all the publications and developments. Also once a week we have a tech talk inside the company where either one of our engineers or somebody we invited from outside talks about a particular topic to educate the rest. We have special interest groups in the campus, for example a special interest group on interoperability, and this is a very critical element for all of our businesses. We also make sure that we strengthen our technical career path. Irrespective of the size of the team each seniors will enjoy the same power dynamics. Our vision is to take control of the Indian local market and to drive innovation for India and the entire world from here in India. All MNC are now creating a very strong process culture and I think it is a very essential part. To make sure that you do things in a repeatable, traceable and documentable way you have to create a strong process culture and we have done this. Also we have a culture that entertains innovation. My vision is to take this spark of innovation and channel it properly so that it becomes all the things that we need it to be. With it we also create an innovation engine here that drives innovation for the world. In Asia people normally do not move fast enough and they would want to do things the same way they used to do it and that is a major challenge for a person like me. si (As told to Christo Jacob)
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June 2012

Technology

CORPORATE DATABASES
By Raman Govindarajan, CEO, perfSYSTEMS

INCREASINg ROI OF

Many corporates see expenditure in data management as a cost item, and do not realize the importance that eective data processing with appropriate database technologies.

However, from a purists standpoint, a lot of large enterprises databases have flaws in approach, architecture, design, choice of platforms etc, reflecting in difficulties in achieving the above goals. With powerful and adaptable hardware/software/database platforms and technologies, these flaws may not surface as noticeable problems upto a threshold size/tps levels. When the database sizes and tps increase, corporate run into many issues and hence their ROI and user satisfaction levels would be inadequate. b. Lots of Organizations are still using archaic database methods like flat files, unsupported legacy systems and their applications, etc. Some rush to open source database platforms for obvious, cost reduction and faster implementation purposes. These platforms may not be scalable, and not support ACID properties especially for mission critical 24*7 applications. While on the short term they may appear economical, the long term costs may or may not be. c. Database Security is a huge issue, as lot of corporate data can be sensitive, and there is a lot of loss of data, due to internal and external threats.

California based perfSYSTEMS is a provider of products, solutions and services in Database Security and Performance, PISO, Vulnerability Monitor, and IT Auditor. By leveraging their expertise in developing customized performance, security related products, database and Internet solutions, and large parallel server architectures, storage systems , the company helps their clients to build optimal, perfect and fast performing systems and solutions.
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a. With the proliferation of web technologies, applications, and multimedia data types, emergence of newer applications like social media and mobile applications, the database sizes and transaction volumes are rising in alarming proportions. Also most corporate applications are data centric, and with databases supporting APIs from most platforms, and having an effective database (logical and physical) design is of utmost importance. Some of the key metrics in measuring the database maturity or effectiveness are: overall system and application stability (no downtimes), reasonable and industry standard performance levels like response times, industry standard security compliance, harmony of the database with the applications, operating systems, networking and storage systems etc.

1. Challenges of Database Technologies

a. One has to start with using appropriate staffing models, choice database and hw/sw platforms architectures (using some of the now common strategies like virtualization, clustering, appropriate cloud computing methods etc) it is possible to provide appropriate support for corporate data, and other metrics such as acceptable performance level, comply with db security requirements, achieve minimal downtimes with fault-tol-

2. How can one overcome these issues, and increase ROI with databases:

erance, disaster recovery etc. b. There are many strategies and products for corporates to have secure database to do compliance checks, and reporting, based on the industries requirements and legislation. These products and services that help customers to have industry compliant secure databases, following appropriate compliance such as HIPPA, SOX, DISA, BASEL etc. c. Old methods/architecture, tend to be expensive to maintain. These companies have to migrate to appropriate modern technologies, which might be many orders of magnitude cheaper, handle large volumes of data, and are more efficient to manage and for the users and their applications. d. Also, many corporates see expenditure in data management as a cost item, and do not realize the importance that effective data processing with appropriate database technologies. First it (efficient data processing with databases, especially with database centric ERP systems) can result in more revenue generation (in efficient and faster order booking, tracking, optimal cost of delivery etc). Second, by storing historical corporate and demographical data in databases, they can make business decisions more scientifically, based on past patterns of consumer behavior, trends etc. Business analytics using data warehouses is gaining importance as one of the top growth areas in IT in recent years. After all, Data is one of the most important corporate assets, and can emerge and grow naturally (in most cases without incremental costs of acquisition), it just requires appropriate maintenance and utilization, for providing effective incremental value and higher ROI to its owner. si
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June 2012

Business

The Business of Making and Keeping Promises

By Mathew Augustine, Principal & COO, Hanna Global Solutions

b. Deadline mandatory the time by which the promise has to be delivered is not negotiable, and an externally specified deadline has to be met.

lmost all human interaction is about making and keeping promises. For a company that delivers services to its clients, it is ONLY about making and keeping promises. A promise to someone is the setting of an expectation in the mind of that someone that something will happen at a certain time. Typically, that something, and that certain time, are variables, and can be negotiated, with more being done faster for a higher price.
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What are the categories of promises? 1. Voluntary promises No one is asking, or forcing one to make it.It is volunteered to a client, with the expectation of getting something back from the client (increase in relationship equity). 2. Discretionary promises one agrees to do something that is asked for. It is not required by the client by way of contractual obligation, or to meet a committed service level and you can say not without compromis-

ing the relationship with the client.One could say no to either the content, or the deadline of the promise. 3. Mandatory promises there is no option to say no, as there is something else beyond the control of the client that is driving the requirement of this promise. The mandatory nature could be either by way of content, or the deadline. a. Content mandatory the specific content of the promise is not negotiable, but has to be carried out as required.

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All the above promises could be: 1. Implied maybe implied in some other promise or communication given to a client, and not explicitly stated as a promise. 2. Assumed a client assumes a promise to have been given, even though it has not been explicitly stated.Sometimes one may not even be aware of a clients expectations based on this assumption. 3. Explicit is given in writing to a client, as either part of a larger agreement, or service level agreements, or specific discussion and acceptance. Avoid implied and assumed promises, and move ALL promises to being explicit.This means all promises must be written down, to ensure successful long-term client relationships. The core to the structure of a promise is the setting of an expectation. One must try to capture as much of this as possible in a Service Level Agreement, by listing out a Statement of Work and Service Level Expectations. Refer to these documents often, to make sure you are meeting standards promised, and coaching clients to expect these standards. There may however be many ad hoc requirements that come up on a daily basis, in any relationship with clients, and it is not practical to cover all situations in an agreement. Try to capture as quickly as possible, in writing, the expectations that are set in the course of a conversation with a client. Most often, promises are made by sales members or client relationship team members. These are people who do not control the actual delivery of the promise. Promises that are delivered by other people in the company

must not be confirmed without verifying with the parties concerned. There will have to be different processes for negotiating the terms of the three different types of promises voluntary, discretionary, and mandatory. If it is voluntary, that is, if no client is asking or forcing one to make it, suggest ideas to a client without confirming it can be done within the expected time, and then get back later and set the expectation, after confirming with other parties involved in the delivery of the promise.

If we make too many promises, or we dont have enough resources to keep them, we have dissatised clients, and they will leave. If we dont make enough promises, competitors will woo them away with more promises
If it is discretionary, that is, if content or deadline is negotiable, discuss the tradeoff of time vs. content with the client, so that the right balance of time vs. content may be confirmed to client, after discussion with other parties involved. If it is mandatory, that is, there is no option to say no, understand the

Hanna Global Solutions is an Employee Benefits advisory and administration firm specializing in the design and delivery of comprehensive H.R. and benefit solutions, tailored to fit todays complex needs. source of the compulsion, what drives the mandatory nature of the requirement, if there are components of the promise that may be negotiable, if there are options to phase delivery of the promise, and so on. The discussion with the other parties involved in delivery in this case is most probably not whether it can be delivered, but how it can be delivered, and how much the delivery will cost. What is our challenge as a service delivery business? To make and keep promises, day in and day out, to our clients, and to other members of the service delivery team. If we make too many promises, or we dont have enough resources to keep them, we have dissatisfied clients, and they will leave.If we dont make enough promises, competitors will woo them away with more promises. It is a balance... as is all of life! An understanding of the categories of promises, and the structure of a promise, can help us achieve the right balance, and run a successful business. si
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June 2012

Business

OPPORTUNITIES gALORE IN RESTAURANT INDUSTRy TODAy!

By Remesh Kuruppath, CEO, Netvarth Technologies Inc.

as there been much change in the Restaurant Industry in the last 12 to 13 years with respect to their usage of Internet technologies? Overall, it is a NO! The limited attempts were Open Tables (NASDAQ: OPEN) capitalization early on restaurant reservations and Snapfinger.coms presence in the Online Food Ordering for large chains. But the majority of restaurants in the U.S. belong to the category of solo restaurants and small chains. And their potential to use Internet technologies for marketing as well as for operations is not still addressed well by the IT industry. The IT industry can help these restaurants in Social Media Marketing with Facebook pages, Facebook Apps and so on. But very few restaurants are into making use such promotional opportunities. Restaurants should be creating for the minimum a Facebook page and generate Likes. They should update the page on a regular basis with spesiliconindia

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cial restaurant offerings and promotions. It is also important that the Restaurants should maintain a dynamic website and update it regularly. The Facebook page should be pointing to the Restaurant website. Restaurants need to systematically create and modify their menus on a regular basis. They also should be able to publish Special Occasion menus as and when needed. Still, a standard or leading IT provider hasnt emerged in this area yet. Restaurants also need Web/Mobile Apps in real time interactions with the restaurant patrons/customers. Restaurants should have promotional discount programs including Printed coupons and eCoupons. This is a must to increase visibility and engage certain segment of the restaurant patrons. Restaurants also should avail the opportunity to take food orders online. This would allow them to attend to the orders offline unlike phone orders. A cost effective IT solution offering hasnt made in-roads into the industry yet!

Netvarth Technologies Inc is a provider of web based Restaurant Management System (RMS) through ForkWorld.com. It provides a wide range of solutions that manage data across multiple departments within a single repository. Using its Web-RMS a restaurant can change customer experience to another level while effectively managing business operations and reducing IT costs dramatically. Restaurant also should send regular Newsletters to their loyal customer base to keep them engaged and excited over the many different offerings at the restaurant. It is natural to suggest that Restaurants should offer Customer Loyalty programs because 20 percent of their customers account for 80 percent of their revenue. Restaurants also should allow their patrons to sign up as Frequent Diners and avail the many different customer loyalty programs. In short, restaurant owners and managers should be cost effectively use Social Media and other Internet and Mobile Apps to generate more visibility and as a result more revenue and profit. And this necessitates the IT industry to provide costeffective solutions to address these. si

June 2012

Management

Bring Back the Human in Human Resources

By Jim Finkelstein, FutureSense, Inc.

on the resources side and need to bring back the human in HR. This will bring about a more engaged workforce, further stimulating the economy and our quality of life.

hen you ask yourself or others why you work, does the answer not stare back at you with a blank smile? You smile because you know you have to work. But the smile is blank because you have no idea why you have to. Do you have to work to survive? Or do you work because its enjoyable and meaningful? The world of work is in a state of transition. The value of work has become so utilitarian making money to pay for bills that we have taken all meaning out of it. It is now facing a new direction. The financial crisis beginning in 2006 stimulated changes across the board for work and life. What has been brought to a clear forefront is the nature of economics, work and business as usual. Corporate scandals, corruption, greed, housing crisis, bailouts and bonuses
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Jim Finkelstein is the leader of people in business. With over 34 years of consulting and corporate experience, he has specialized in business and people strategy, motivation and reward, and organizational assessment, development, communications and transformation. Finkelstein has worked for diverse industries, from health care to high tech. He has built programs and provided services to Boards of Directors, senior executives, management and employees. His experience includes being a partner in a Big Five firm, a CEO of a professional services firm, a corporate executive for Fortune 500 companies, and an entrepreneur with his current company, FutureSense, Inc. He has experienced business from every possible angle and through every possible change.

Jim Finkelstein

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have all become acronyms, household words and/or fodder for late night talk show hosts to most working adults. Employees people have become disposable. Why have we let this happen? And, more importantly, why do we let this continue to happen? It all has to do with the way we view the world, our place in it, and the values that we share with each other. Most organizations have operated under a mechanistic mindset for the better part of the century, chugging and churning away towards an idealized notion of progress. Contemporary Human Resource circles claim to focus on both the human and the resource, however these claims are just not true. For too long a time, they have focused on the resource side, using the same mechanistic language and processes to refer to their employees. They view their em-

ployees as capital to be invested in or resources to be utilized (aka depleted). This mechanistic/industrial model has forced us to abandon fundamental values about how we treat other humans. Losing sight of these values is destroying our economy and culture. Job rates are lower than ever and job satisfaction is down too, not just as the result of a failing economy. Population pressures, pollution, and stress are now normal facets of our existence. The American population actually reached its peak happiness in the 1950s and has steadily declined since. An ultimate low point has been undoubtedly reached with the current recession. What we need is a new paradigm to the way we view work one that we are all calling for in our hearts and souls. We have placed enough attention

Tracing the Ages To understand where this new paradigm is going, we must understand where it came from. Since the early 1900s, the industrial model has dominated the American workplace. At its onset, the model presented companies with mechanized improvements offering increased efficiency and productive capacity. Machines and production lines replaced hands-on craftsmanship for goods and services. This revolution presented the American worker with more opportunities to raise their socioeconomic status and the allure of the American Dream. Believe it or not, the industrial model never left and still prominently exists as the dominant paradigm of work and life in the West. In the late 1900s and early 2000s, another transition occurred the Technological Revolution or Information Age. Workers again fled one site for another, leaving the factory for the office cubicle where computers replaced hand tools. The same set of industrial rules and culture applied. Workers reported for duty, clocking in 9-5 under the watchful eye of their superiors. They processed paper work, wrote program codes, or developed marketing schemes. They received employee identification numbers along with sets of guidelines and instruction manuals. Their role within organizations existed as component parts of a system. Looking back, in the grand scheme of things (meaning: the entire scope of human existence and social organizational models), the industrial system is relatively young and short-lived. When millions of workers lost their jobs, retirement plans, and homes, it was clear that the model had some pitfalls. So, where does this model fall short?

The problem with the industrial model is two-fold: 1) It relies on the perception that endless growth and progress dependent upon inexhaustible resources is needed to secure the future of human society 2) Component parts whether human or machine must be maintained We know now that planetary resources are, in fact, finite and limited. You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. We also know that human beings are not mechanized parts of a system and seek further goals in life. Economics is a non-meaningful relationship created by people that seek meaning. These facts prove both points above to be incompatible with any future development and decry a coming (or the current) change. This system has recently offered indicators of a massive change, beginning with the financial crises of 2006. Since then, we have seen expanding statistics of joblessness and job dissatisfaction. Health care costs associated with these lifestyles continued to boom and American culture suffers. Can we really accept that this system is working?

The Effects of Change So, what happens when a change befalls the existing status quo? Some fail and others succeed, some suffer and others prosper, some cease and others thrive. The Great Transition is upon us, coming to its greatest fruition perhaps this year. Charles Darwin, in his theory of natural selection, was often misquoted as saying evolution is driven by survival of the fittest. What he actually meant to say, correcting himself later, was that it is driven by survival of the most responsive to change. Currently, the companies that are thriving (think Google, etc.) not only have a tight business plan and immensely valuable services, but are also returning back to an older model of workforce engagement. They are

A Solution Previous times were more polarized, but we believe in the concept of both/and. The new paradigm acknowledges the accomplishments of the industrial and tech revolutions and their mechanistic views. It is both a testament to those models and a re-acknowledgement of human needs and values. For example, employee engagement surveys have traditionally been very impersonal and scientific. Psychology and statistics now deem how much one is engaged by their work through a series of numbers and supposed inferences. Standing alone, these surveys fall short of actually cultivating engagement. We believe they have immense value, but should never be used in lieu of human-to-human accountability. As a social species, we thrive best through direct human interaction, but in large and complex organizations, these surveys do provide insights that may benefit the workforce as a whole. What this new model is straying away from is the treatment of employees as components of a system. They are no longer just numbers or working parts. They are valuable members of an organization or a community working towards a common goal. They form relationships with each other and develop true senses of teamwork and collaboration. This new paradigm is a boomerang thrown into the wind because it challenges the status quo and the establishment. Things are changing inevitably, so it up to all of us including our leadership to adapt so that we may thrive. si
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bringing back the human in Human Resources, recognizing that their workers have needs, feelings, and goals in life. Will other companies continue to follow these models? What happens if they dont? What does this new model of workforce engagement even look like?

June 2012

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June 2012

CIO Insights

CLOUD & MOBILE

Changing Technology Trends

MOVINg TO

IS PERTINENT FOR BUSINESSES

The real overriding trend is the complexity that is increasing. The reason being that for 10 15 years excluding the dot com there were a clear set of enterprise IT vendors. We were equipped with the SAP or ERP; we had the Microsoft on the desktop CISCO on network. Something that has fundamentally changed in the last 3 4 years is the whole conception piece. Consumers are becoming more IT savvy and consumer IT way surpassing enterprise IT. Big companies have big margins and the gap between the consumer offering and enterprise IT is expanding. With the growing amount of consumer offering we have several options in the major computing world. Such things are observant by the Silicon Valley. It has been different here and it has been in the rest of the country for the last three years. We had three booms going on in the same time, Cloud, global and social. From consumers stand point everything is cloud. Whereas from an enterprise stand point the rise of companies like Salesforce.com, Workday that provide single purpose sort of cloud solutions. It not only provides you with an opportunity to do things faster but also at a lower cost. This really increased the complexity. Earlier you would buy application from Oracle or SAP. But now we are in a much more fragmented situation the reason being the solutions that are being provided by various cloud vendors today. These solutions are easy to implement as we are free from the technical complexities on the back end. Taking a look at the cloud standpoint at Maxim, we push a lot of things. We are Salesforce and Workday customers and our strategy is to avoid buying in-house software application unless there is no other way to do it. We focus on the innovation of infrastructure but more than that, we focus on application. The cloud revolution is on and we are focused on migrating to it. Immigration to cloud means, before we implement it, we need to make sure that we have listed we are universally tied to it, and we can move the data back and forth properly. That is how the cloud has affected us. Additionally, the mo-

bile revolution in my view has been great for consumers and great for business. The conferences I attended I notice they talk about mobile and they get stuck on the hardware side. Because they think mobile is about hardware but the fact is, its not. Now everyone is already mobile. With this you not only can work from anywhere but are forced to work 24 hours a day 7 days a week. From an enterprise IT stand point the issue with mobile is way beyond hardware i.e. really transforming the IT organization to think from a mobile capacity standpoint on the application side because the traditional programming methodology the traditional thought process is around functionality and mobile is an after part. Thus my big challenge is moving mobile in the forefront of application development so that anything we do is usable on mobile platform and that was the cloud mobile, and on the social side which seems like the least relevant to the enterprise IT organization.

Immigration to cloud means, before we implement it, we need to make sure that we have listed we are universally tied to it
Driving Innovation within the team Its a lot easier here in Silicon Valley to be innovative. I have a good team of people. Its not a significant amount of money but I call it we are in the budget. So have our research and development compounded of IT. Constantly pushing these guys and they are pushing me as well. We keep trying out new technology. For instance 3-4 years ago the price point got to a point where may be two years ago where you could make a reasonable cost effective argument. So we started putting up everything on laptop and this speeds the performance by five times. Its a rational case we started doing it. A lot of companies are not even doing now but some of them are. After this we looked at ways to discourage to the use of our data center. Because if we can speed up are business intelligent reporting by five times speed up or engineering simulation, there is a massive marketing impact. There are people working on evaluations and some of the newer technologies. So thats an innovation thing. Whereas training for people, we have conferences where we quiz the people to network with their peers to see what they are doing. Its similar to giving order to your troop and finding out what is happening in the

rest of the valley the rest of the industry and IT in general and tracking what the technology does and what they can do for Maxim. IT initiatives at Maxim We are a 28 years old company and we are into manufacturing and also high volume transaction. So we do a lot of fundamental things that has to be there and that have to be fixed. We are really fixed on showing our sort base set of application as well our infrastructure. I have been here for four years. We are now focused on pricing and coding as well as upgrading our manufacturing system that are not modern. The social side has driven for a couple of years and mobile devices which are a sort of BYOD policy for several years. The transactional application is to keep the company running. We have been into manufacturing, sales and engineering and is a big function. For engineering we hire engineering architecture the way we do engineering from a computing stand point and basically been able to speed up our simulation times by nearly 50 percent.

Walter Curd Walter Curd is the VP and CIO for Maxim Integrated Products. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Maxim Integrated Products (NASDAQ: MXIM) is a $2.5 billion in annual revenue that makes highly integrated analog and mixedsignal semiconductors. In his current position Curd has led a modernization effort of infrastructure and applications that has begun to produce substantial business benefits. Curd insures that Maxim is an early adopter of consumer technologies, cloud computing, and most recently enterprise social networking. Prior to joining Maxim, he built the Information Technology Services organization for Marvell Semiconductor to support their growth from $300M to over $3.0B during his tenure. He has also led the IT organizations for Fujitsu, Electroglas, and CyberIQ Systems.
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The technology / enterprise problem We do not have to deal with software or technology problems. Take a look at the U.S. technology the real problem is with the people in the process. From IT standpoint its about buying the top notch people and retaining the top notch people to be able to execute on these technology. Whereas from the people standpoint having the people in the business with the a vision to make use of these technologies, who have a proper focus on the business side and the IT side in order to drive the usage of that, to define the benefit and to achieve the benefit. Technology moves forward but people move forward at a slower rate. If you have the technology but lack of people in the business to take advantage, it wont work. Its a very mundane thing but its a fact.

Future outlook For us, we are adamant that there would be no more in-house applications. We essentially have no reason to buy in-house software anymore and are moving much of our non core functionalities to the cloud. That will help in freeing up some of the resources to. We are making everything mobile and become pretty much device agnostic. Our initiatives are focused on more process and people. The program management office is focused on engaging with business executives and making sure we understand the key performances and indicators and then working with them to get technology that will push them either forward. si
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June 2012

Entrepreneur's corner
will need to go through this process. The process starts with having several meetings with the VC and his team over the course of a few months. First, find someone who knows the VC to introduce you. It will improve your chances of getting a meeting quickly. For your meeting, be prepared. Know your product and numbers very well. For instance, if a VC asks you what your revenue projection is or how much revenue you did last year, you should be able to answer it right away without consulting your CFO or looking at slides or papers. If asked to demo the product, you as CEO should be able to do it without seeking help from your product manager or another team member. The reason is simple. The CEO of a startup is the Chief Sales Officer of the company. He needs to know what he is selling and the revenues for last year, this year and future years. Knowing these by heart and articulating them clearly shows confidence in your abilities. 2. Excellence in Execution In order to continue to build trust and confidence and hence, your relationship with the VC, you need to show progress on the business or the product development in your subsequent meetings. For example, if you committed to some milestones in your prior meeting, then show that you have accomplished those milestones. If there were changes, then have clear reasons for the changes in terms of what, why and how. What changed in your milestones? Why did it happen? How did you do go about solving issues or finding an alternative strategy? VCs know that plans change and they are looking to see how fast you learn and how you deal with changes. 3. Voice of the Customer When you are asked by the VC how your product compares to competitors or to other approaches that are solving the similar pain point, you need to be fully prepared to answer this from a customers perspective. This is what I call the voice of the customer. Why would a customer buy your product? Why would he put his job at risk by buying from a startup? He would rather stay on the safe side by buying from one of the large vendors or waiting for them to come out with a product even if it is late by a year. Articulate your companys advantages clearly and crisply - whether it is a delightful customer experience that your product provides such as ease to use, install, configure, and manage or 10X performance advantage or 10X lower cost. Whatever the secret sauce is, make sure it reflects the real voice of the customer, not just a technology benefit that customer may not care about. 4. 4. Clear Expectations As first time entrepreneurs, we assume that after our first meeting, we will leave the meeting with a check in hand. However, the reality is far from that. Consider it just like selling a product. It may require many meetings with a customer to close a sale. It starts with an initial meeting to describe benefits of your solution, the pain points its going to solve and showing a product demo. It is then followed by customer doing a product trial before he is ready to buy. Similarly, a first meeting with a VC is your entry point and your objective is to get a follow up meeting. A follow up meeting shows VC interest for a more detailed presentation followed by further meetings including due diligence with customers before having a full-fledged meeting with other members of the VC firm. If you have gone this far, the chances are that you are moving in the right direction. The final step is that the VC and his partners are fully excited and ready to negotiate terms of the deal. Its essential to have a clear expectation for the steps and the timeline of this entire process. Make sure that you clarify the timeline with the VC in your first meeting. Also, make sure that you are transparent in your dealing with the VC and providing correct information to them. If you build trust and confidence in your abilities and vision, then you might be on your way to getting your company funded by this VC firm. The steps outlined are as essential as the tactical steps in pitching to a VC and hence, it will establish trust. In summary, my four 4KTAs are to establish trust, confidence and build a relationship, excel in execution, focus on the voice of the customer, and have clear expectations. si
siliconindia

THE VC PITCH UNWRAPPED: 4KTA

By Naveen Bisht, Board Member, Chair Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE ) Silcon Valley

Naveen Bisht is a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE and member ) of TiE Angels Steering Committee, based in Silicon Valley, California.

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itching to a venture capitalist (VC) is a key step in the process of raising capital for your startup. If you do Google search for pitching to a VC, you will get thousands of links. Lots of them may be useless, but a number of them can cover tactical steps you need to take. I would encourage you to read a blog by David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners, focusing on many topics for entrepreneurs, and an article A VCs Advice on how to pitch VCs by Raj Kapoor of Mayfield Fund. They provide tons of useful information on how to prepare for your pitch. All the important information that you will need is there: keeping number of slides to less than 10 or 12, the teams background, product, market opportunity, competitive differentiation, business model, and financial projections. My focus,

however, on this article is to provide you a different perspective with my four key takeaways (4KTA) to help you through your funding process. It is based upon a number of important points from my discussion with Armando Pauker, General Partner at Apex Venture Partners, an early stage VC firm focused on high technology investments. 1. Establish Trust, Confidence and Build a Relationship There is an old saying that in money matters, the first and most important thing is the trust between two parties. In order to establish trust, you need to establish a solid relationship first. How do you establish a relationship with a VC? If you are already one of the sought after startup companies, then VC financing may work rapidly in your favor. However, if your company is still in its infancy, then you

Wafer-thin device embedded in the sole of your shoe harnesses harmless viruses to turn mechanical energy into electricity with the movement of your feet. this approach was tested by creating a 'live' generator that produces enough power to operate a small liquid-crystal display. it works by tapping a nger on a stamp-sized electrode which is converted into electric charge by the specially engineered viruses.
Courtesy: Seung-Wuk lee, scientist in Berkeley lab's Physical Biosciences Division.

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June 2012

Business

The 4g challenge that NETWORKINg USERS NOW FACE

By Dan-Joe Barry, VP Marketing, Napatech

Dan-Joe Barry, VP Marketing with Napatech, looks at some of the challenges that 4G cellular poses the networking community..

ne of the biggest technical challenges facing the networking industry today are the demands that the next generation of cellular communications known as 4G (for fourth generation) will place on the network backhaul and communications networks generally. 4G better known as Long Term Evolution by those in the know is a revolution in terms of data speeds, but is actually a natural upgrade for existing 2G and 3G cellular networks, achieving downstream speeds of an astonishing 300 Mbps and uplink speeds of 75 Mbps. And just to make life interesting, because LTE is designed as the name implies as an evolutionary standard, even higher speeds are made possible through the use of LTE Advanced (LTE-A) technology. Early tests of LTE-A suggest that mobile data speeds of 1 Gbps (yes, a gigabit per
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second) downstream are going to be the norm when the technology arrives commercially in the latter half of the decade. Achieving this kind of speed on a mobile basis is not actually that difficult because of the cellular/wireless technology involved, but the real fun and games - from a networking perspective - comes when all of this data needs to be backhauled across the wireline network and interconnected with the Internet and other mobile services. But hey, its mainly voice communications were talking here and voice calls consume only a smidgen of networking bandwidth, so whats the big deal? This might have been true in the past, but figures released late last year by Three the smallest of the UKs five main cellcos - show that 97 per cent of its mobile

network usage in the UK is databased (http://bit.ly/xZv8B8). And if you need confirmation of how much bandwidth is being consumed by the cellcos, take a look around you when youre next on the train, and youll almost certainly see a lot of people surfing, emailing and interacting and all using their smartphone or laptop computers. This surge in cellular networking usage will need four main pillars of support: excellent network monitoring, testing, security and optimisation. Since 4G mobile networks like LTE are entirely packet based (rather than circuit-switched like 2G and 3G), there is a greater need to monitor mobile networks in real-time to understand where traffic is coming from, where it is going, which applications are being used and by whom. This information can be used for efficient planning and anticipating network problems before they occur. But, even more importantly, this information can provide the basis for making more intelligent decisions on how to offer services to customers and under what terms. Since packet networks are shared, one user can potentially hijack bandwidth starving others in the process. So, while you might have a 1 Gbps download capacity, you are not able to download as that bandwidth has already been taken upstream. One of the potential areas of congestion in mobile networks is the increase in signalling traffic. Each time a service is used, signalling is sent back and forth to help setup and support the service. With the multitude of apps on smartphones today, there is a real danger of signalling explosion on mobile networks. Excellent network testing based on protocol analysis and synchronized traffic generation helps planners to ensure that these scenarios are taken into account. Protocol analyzers use probe technology to remotely monitor crit-

One of the potential areas of congestion in mobile networks is the increase in signalling traffic. Each time a service is used, signalling is sent back and forth to help setup and support the service

ical points in the network analyzing and collecting information on signalling traffic amongst other things. This allows operators to monitor performance in real-time. Synchronized traffic generation allows multiple time-synchronized load testing systems to be located at various geographic locations simulating a large number of mobile devices. Since the systems are syncrhonized with nanosecond precision, it is possible to load the network with data from multiple locations at exactly the same time. This is an invaluable tool in simulating potential network-crashing events. Optimum security for these IP transmissions will also be required, as the sheer volume of data flowing across cellular network backhaul networks will make the backhaul networks a key target for cybercriminals remember that a growing number of mobile broadband users will be accessing their online bank accounts

and making transactions with their mobile phone. The final networking pillar required will be excellent network optimisation, which will help the cellcos and their national network partners extract optimum bandwidth out of their finite network resources. Indeed one can take this one step further and call it service optimisation, as the main goal is to ensure that mobile users can access the services they need when they need them with a quality of service for which they are willing to pay. Optimising the network is thus a part of the service assurance process, but the information gathered by network optimisation nodes, such as Deep Packet Inspection probes and Policy Enforcement Servers can be used by cellcos to offer services, which are more in tune with subscriber needs, such as ensuring maximum performance for Facebook or Gaming or providing higher bandwidth services at different times of the day. The common theme for these four pillars is the need for a network monitoring and analysis infrastructure to complement the communications infrastructure of 4G mobile networks. To ensure that available bandwidth and resources are used optimally, especially in the face of explosive data growth, it is essential that the right network monitoring infrastructure based on independent deep packet capture probes is established. This approach is already widely used for network monitoring, testing, security and optimisation of Ethernet and IP networks and can be readily applied to 4G mobile networks. Running a mobile network without an effective network monitoring and analysis infrastructure is like driving a sports car at night with the lights off. As long as the road is straight, no problem. But, when the road turns... si
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June 2012

siTech20
U.S INDEX
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 RANK COMPANY
Index of the top tech public companies in U.S founded and managed by Indians

Stock Price (US$)Closing 25.05.2012 17 33 28 62 56 14 14 17 19 11 23 6 18 31 14 14 6 9 4 60

52 Week HIGH 38 53 35 65 63 31 19 20 23 16 29 9 30 31 40 25 8 24 9 78

52 Week LOW 17 31 18 34 38 14 12 9 11 7 20 6 13 30 14 14 4 8 2 54

% CHANGE IN PRICE 4 Weeks 52 Weeks -19 -13 -15 11 -7 -33 -18 -11 0 -15 -18 -25 -14 -11 -26 -13 -21 0 -33 -19 -54 -27 0 29 6 -48 -13 -6 -14 -27 -4 -14 -5 -21 -44 -42 -31 -59 100 -19

CAPITALIZATION In $ Millions 9080 8220 4670 3380 2350 1530 1330 969 804 774 726 703 653 594 528 398 340 201 93 18

Juniper Networks SanDisk Corporation Tibco Software Concur Technologies Syntel Aruba Networks Qlogic Corporation iGate NetScout Ixia EXL Service holdings Infinera Corporation Ebix, Inc Microchip Tech Make My Trip Sycamore Networks MIPS Technologies Rubicon Technology eGain Communications Cognizant Tech

JNPR SNDK TIBX CNQR SYNT ARUN QLGC IGTE NTCT XXIA EXLS INFN EBIX MCHP MMYT SCMR MIPS RBCN EGAN CTSH

INDIA INDEX
RANK COMPANY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Index of the top tech public companies in India

Stock Price INR Closing 25.05.2012 1223 2379 395 487 76 665 374 516 586 840 617 75 114 43 38 33 120 19 10 24

52 Week HIGH 1295 3024 453 524 94 798 488 521 960 1302 626 144 195 110 60 422 154 49 43 68

52 Week LOW 902 2162 311 360 58 528 278 250 513 721 288 50 103 36 34 29 91 17 10 22

% CHANGE IN PRICE 4 Weeks 52 Weeks 5 -1 -4 -4 2 -4 4 2 -17 -8 13 -17 -19 -3 -15 -12 -6 -2 -33 -1 7 -15 -11 -4 -3 0 -20 54 -29 -27 75 -45 -39 -59 -32 -92 -19 -51 -74 -59

CAPITALIZATION In Rs. Crore 239000 135000 96412 33724 8973 8466 7850 6937 2699 2566 2501 1216 1133 964 644 318 309 196 173 167

Tata Consultancy Services Infosys Technologies Wipro Ltd HCL Technologies Mahindra Satyam Tech Mahindra Mphasis Patni Comp Financial Technologies CMC Ltd Mindtree Rolta India Polaris Software HCL Infosystems NIIT Ltd GTL Ltd Sasken Communications Technology Sonata Software Moser Baer Subex Systems
June 2012

siliconindia

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he Indian IT industry has come a long way. Including the domestic IT business, the industry has crossed $100 billion in revenues with over 3.5 million employees. Five of the top 10 global leaders in software services are Indian companies. With all Indian companies put together account only for 10 percent of the $850 billion global IT services industry indicating there is ample space for growth. However, the growth for Indian IT industry is choked at present. Although India's IT services exports grew by a robust 19 percent yearon-year in dollar terms in 2011-12, the trends in the last two quarters are worrisome. Hit by the continued macro-economic woes in developed countries that resulted in delays in project ramp-ups, the top four Indian IT companies grew at 17 percent in the third quarter and 14 percent in the fourth quarter, against a healthy 24 percent in the firsthalf. In the current volatile global economy even achieving growth rates of 10-14 percent has become challenging. Some of the aftershocks of this global economic downturn are already visible. The BFSI (banking, financial services, insurance) industry, which has been the bread earner for the IT services industry accounting for more than 40 per cent of Indian IT services players revenues is lurching from one crisis to another, never having fully recovered from the 2008 meltdown. In 2011, global BFSI clients reported a dip in profsiliconindia

GROW or DIE

By Pradeep Shankar

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itability due to lower revenue growth and pressure on margins. Telecom clients too, have been going through tough times. As a result, the cash flows and discretionary spending of such large clients have come down significantly in the last few quarters of 2011-12 and is expected to remain subdued in the next few quarters. In such a scenario, the competition for Indian IT service players is not from the global IT service majors. The new competition is mainly between Indian offshore players leading to lack of pricing power, commoditization and reduction in margins. There will be growth but margins will be lesser. To remain profitable companies will have to change strategy and invest in consulting space, handling business transformation projects like how IBM or an Accenture has been doing. As one of the eminent industry observer puts it, "The Indian players will need to build a high-quality consulting and domain-rich front end, change sales to a partner model, empower the front end, create a more visible country specific local leadership, spend more on marketing and brand equity, change compensation structure and move the center of management from India to the countries where their market is. The existing delivery-based centralized power structures need to morph into client focused groups, more federated and less control based. It also means changing the focus to tackling business challenges leveraging technology, transforming enterprises, than

being purveyors of technology-led projects. In short, from delivering projects to transforming enterprises."

Unlike the past, this phase is going to be painful. Many of the companies are directionless. This is interesting times to be a leader in the IT services space. It is a true test of ability of today's leaders if they can pull this through. On their ability to transform themselves to meet the needs of the market will lie their success and profits. The risks are too high. If they succeed, they are game in. If they fail, perhaps there isn't a second chance. si

The Indian players will need to build a highquality consulting and domain-rich front end, change sales to a partner model, empower the front end, create a more visible country specific local leadership, change compensation structure and move the center of management from India to the countries where their market is.

June 2012